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The Wild Enclosed is a film made within a former mediaeval deer park, on the outer rim of Manchester's metropolitan city region. Featuring ancient oaks and an abandoned outbuilding (‘The Slaughterhouse’), the film dwells on our complex and changing relationship with the land. Featuring an 18th century folk ballad performed by the artists, ruminating on the loss of the ‘Commons’, the film weaves together historic social issues of public access to land, private enclosure and today's managed preservation of an idyllic, wild woodland estate.
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The Wild Enclosed / stills, 2021
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine
The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to keep them poor
They hang the man and hang the woman
Who steal the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Until they go and steal it back
[Seventeenth century protest ballad against English enclosures]
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